In November I was very fortunate to participate in the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED) conference in Cape Town (thanks boss!). I presented some of the thinking that Tai Peseta and I have been doing around students as partners. You can see our abstract here iced-2016-abstract, and we plan to publish a full paper at some stage. The session was well attended, which is a bit of a lottery at a big conference with lots of parallel sessions.

The conference’s keynote speakers were a highlight – particularly Joan Tronto, Achille Mbembe and Michalinyos Zembylas. I’ve linked to their conference think pieces, and have been inspired to read more of their work. I also particularly enjoyed the presentation by Vivienne Bozalek and colleagues on ‘diffractive’ methodology. The talk by Ellen Hurst on ‘translanguaging’ in the classroom and in assessment was eye opening . I really appreciated Vanessa-Jean Merckel’s honesty in discussing how she and her students learn about social justice. Roisin Kelly-Laubscher, Moragh Paxton, Samukele Mashele & Ziyanda Majombozi presented their findings about South African first generation students. They are contributing a chapter to a book I’m co-editing called Understanding Experiences of First Generation University Students, to be published by Bloomsbury in early 2018 – can’t wait!

The conference organisers did an amazing job during a very difficult time of the #feesmustfall and the #rhodesmustfall protests. The morning keynote sessions were at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Baxter Theatre (loved the architecture). The original plan was then to have the parallel sessions on the UCT campus, but due to the possibility of the campus being closed by protests, we instead hopped on buses to go the parallel sessions in two nearby hotels.

It was just a short trip but I did a short ‘hop-on, hop-off’ bus tour, and stayed in airbnb accommodation near UCT, which was a great way to get some insight into local life. The after-effects of apartheid, some 22 years on, are still apparent and confronting. After the trip I read Trevor Noah’s autobiography Born a Crime, which I highly recommend for its very personal and vivid insights into life under- and post-apartheid.

I love the book Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, about a group of musicians and Shakespearean actors travelling round a post-apocalyptic USA. One of my favourite parts is where two former business men (who were trapped, and now live in, an airport) discuss the corporate speak in an old document one of them has preserved in the airport’s ‘Museum of Civilisation’:

“Okay, so under ‘Communication’ here’s the first comment. ‘He’s not good at cascading information down to staff.’ Was he a whitewater rafter, Clark? I’m just curious.”

“This one’s my other favourite. ‘He’s successful in interfacing with clients we already have, but as for new clients, it’s low-hanging fruit. He takes a high-altitude view, but he doesn’t drill down to that level of granularity where we might actionize new opportunities.'”

“There are high altitudes, apparently, also low-hanging fruit, also grains of something, also drilling.”

“Presumbaly he was a miner who climbed mountains and actionized an orchard in his off-hours.”

This type of corporate speak is invading higher education. I’ve been in a meeting where someone said ‘yes, we can onboard that resource’, which took me a while to realise meant ‘hire a new person’ (I think!).

There’s been a huge rise in the number of professional staff working in universities (see Hannah Forsyth’s excellent book for the Australian context), many of whom have come from the corporate world. I realise that universities are increasingly run as large corporations – with salaries to match for those at the top. But the corporate-speak feels jarring to me, at odds with the intellectual endeavours of higher education.

“The new language is the offspring of a hypertrophic bureaucracy,” he said. “We know that the old academic language was muddy, pompous and rhetorical. For decades we fought against it and looked with longing towards the clarity and conciseness of the English language. But this is worse, often I have no idea what they are talking about. It is both glacial and mystifying.

“I believed our job was to form minds, awaken interests, stimulate intellectually and transmit knowledge. I now discover that I am providing a ‘service’, like gas, to ‘customers’ who, if all goes well, become ‘products’, like tinned food.”

Keir Thorpe suggests that the rise of corporate speak might be the fault of academics, some of whom look down on administrators.

Whatever the reason for the invasion, the language we use is important. What are your thoughts on this topic? Should we resist corporate speak, or is it here to stay?

This is our abstract from the HERDSA 2016 conference, which for some reason wasn’t made available online, so I’m popping it up here:

There is growing interest in Australia and worldwide in working with students as partners (SAP). Based on our own experiences of working with SAP (Peseta et al. 2016) and our reading of the literature, we offer a set of provocations designed to tease out some of the theoretical and methodological tensions involved in SAP initiatives. Working with SAP is seen by many as a way to reshape higher education, because such initiatives can be transformative for students, academics and universities. Examples of such transformations include changes to policy and practice, curriculum renewal, students gaining graduate attributes, and academics changing their views about teaching.

Some SAP researchers draw on threshold concepts theory to inform their work, arguing that academics and students partnering to explore pedagogical practice is a threshold concept. Once academics cross the threshold of working with SAP, they are ‘much more likely to think about their work with students less as “transmission” and as “more of a transaction”’ (Cook-Sather & Luz 2015, 1099). Linking students as co-inquirers with threshold concepts theory might help us better understand some of the difficulties that academics and students encounter in the ambiguous space of partnership. Other bodies of theoretical work may also usefully inform SAP work, including student approaches to learning and teachers approaches to teaching (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999), and Indigenous ways of research and knowing (Chilisa, 2012; Martin, 2008).

Yet claims that the field of SAP is under theorised persist. As Taylor and Robinson contend, ‘the student voice has been seen principally as a mode of practical intervention … allied to agendas around…improvement’ (2009, 161, 163). Peseta (2013) notes that the student voice can also be seen as an effect of the political desire that seeks it, suggesting that an innocent view of SAP intentions takes too little account of the diversity of methodological traditions informing its research agenda. Because SAP is inspired by everything from liberalism, critical theory, post-colonialism and post-structuralism, different views of the ‘self’, ‘experience’ and ‘voice’ circulate within its literature. Perhaps surprisingly, the effect of these differences is rarely remarked upon. This inattention is what makes the SAP agenda especially appealing to those in universities focused on the liberating tendencies of partnership as democracy and those who see neoliberal markets as key to higher education futures.

In this session, our ambition is to think with others to draw out the implications for the practice of SAP agenda.

]]>https://theycallmedrbell.com/2016/10/05/students-as-partners-a-way-to-re-shape-higher-education-pedagogy-or-neoliberal-seduction/feed/0amanibellWorking with theory – go hard or go homehttps://theycallmedrbell.com/2015/08/11/working-with-theory-go-hard-or-go-home/
https://theycallmedrbell.com/2015/08/11/working-with-theory-go-hard-or-go-home/#commentsTue, 11 Aug 2015 03:45:31 +0000http://theycallmedrbell.com/?p=257This moment has been coming for a while. My background is in science, and I’m now working in academic development. So in the past when people have talked about theorists such as Bourdieu, Foucault, Derrida and the gang, I’ve struggled to understand. When I saw that Dr Remy Low was giving a talk called ‘How to do things with theory’ , I was so there!

Remy took us on an exciting romp through phenomenology, critical theory and post-structuralism, enlivened by poetry, memes (including the one above) and music videos. Obviously there was only so much he could cover in two hours, but it was a great introduction. His talk has made me more aware of the theory-lite nature of my own research to date. And I’m not the only one. The lack of theory in higher education research has been pointed out several times e.g. Ashwin (2012), Hutchings (2007). A whole issue of HERD was devoted to the topic ‘Questioning theory-method relations in higher education research’.

My research is crying out for it. I’m interested in many different topics in higher education, and making better use of theory will help me tie those interests together and see them in new and exciting ways.

So I now need to leap in and start reading. My plan is start with theorists who write about education or higher education. My ideas so far include Raewyn Connell, Sue Clegg & Catherine Manathunga. Other suggestions for reading are very welcome.

I know that some of the writing might be difficult to understand. But as a colleague pointed out, statistics is difficult and off-putting for those who don’t have a statistics background.

One of the good things about constructive alignment is that it’s been around long enough for people to have done some research on it. Wang and colleagues in 2013 found that ‘students in more constructively aligned courses were more likely to adopt deep learning approaches and less likely to use surface learning approaches in their study of a particular course.’ Larkin and Richardson found ‘evidence of improvement in student satisfaction and academic grades as a result of implementing constructive alignment.’

I’m currently doing the SEDA course Online Introduction to Educational Change, and one of the objectives is to gain a ‘sense of learning design from our own perspective and from the perspective of your fellow learners’. To prompt our thinking, we watched a video on the 7Cs of Learning Design, presented by Professor Gráinne Conole. Conole’s 2013 book, Designing for Learning in an Open World, looks interesting – I’ll have to add it to my reading list! I can see from the chapter titles that Conole has considered learning design from the viewpoints of different disciplines – and naturally learning design will mean different things for different disciplines – e.g. architects vs engineers vs mathematicians.

One of things I like about the 7Cs model is the emphasis on getting feedback from your peers, and on reflection. These aspects aren’t obvious within the constructive alignment model.

I’m curious to hear from others about what models you use for learning design. Are there any fans of constructive alignment out there? Is there something about ‘blended learning’ that requires a different approach to learning design?

Have teachers taken the rhetoric of participation too far? Susan Cain in her book ‘Quiet’ (also see her TED talk) makes some great points about how teaching in higher education privileges extroverts, and expects students to ‘engage’ and ‘participate’ by talking, answering and asking questions, giving presentations and by doing lots of group work (and see Chapter 3 for her critique of group work ‘When collaboration kills creativity’). Quiet students are seen as too passive and not suited to doing well in the workplace. For example, at Harvard Business School

The school tries hard to turn quiet students into talkers. The professors have their own “Learning Teams” in which they egg each other on with techniques to draw out reticent students. When students fail to speak up in class, it’s seen not only as their deficit but also their professor’s. “If someone doesn’t speak by the end of the semester, it’s problematic,” Professor Michel Anteby told me. “It means I didn’t do a good job.”

This extreme privileging of spoken communication disadvantages students who, for whatever reason, don’t feel comfortable speaking up generally, or just at that moment. A recent paper by Phan Le Ha and Bingui Li studies the reasons why Chinese university students in China and Australia are silent in class. Their paper challenges lecturers’ assumptions that such students are passive due to the language barrier, as students in the study gave varied reasons as to why they remained silent in class. The participants in the study did not see

in-class silence as a ‘problem’ that needs to be ‘corrected’ or ‘remedied’…[they] do not endorse that talking is a necessary element of students’ thinking; rather these two processes are different.

So what can we do as teachers?

Think about the purpose of class discussion

If class participation is assessed, think carefully about how this is done

Pay attention to what Ha and Li call the ‘multilayered meanings and values’ of silences

]]>https://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/07/04/you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent/feed/0amanibellceramic artwork by Vanessa LongLet me entertain youhttps://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/06/19/let-me-entertain-you/
https://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/06/19/let-me-entertain-you/#respondThu, 19 Jun 2014 02:59:31 +0000http://theycallmedrbell.com/?p=217How important is it to be an entertaining teacher? Kane Sandretto and Heath’s study of 17 excellent university teachers noted the importance of ‘personality’, especially enthusiasm, humour and passion.

This got me thinking about teaching as entertainment. There are plenty of examples of entertaining teachers, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNxaSct3UHs. But how much do students learn if the focus is solely on being entertaining?

In 2013 there was an interesting blog post by James Rovira, who argues that being entertained implies passivity, and so it’s better to focus on the pleasure of learning.

For some teachers, this kind of style of teaching can look too over the top and energetic – people think it’s not their style and find it off putting. (I’ve heard it described as ‘too masculine’!) Being enthusiastic, passionate and humorous is all well and good, but what if you’re not naturally outgoing? Can you ‘fake it til you make it’?

Susan Cain, in her book Quiet (also see her TED talk), reports her discussions with Professor Brian Little (see his TED talk here). Little, an avowed introvert, is nonetheless an entertaining lecturer and award winning teacher. He says he’s able to do this because he cares deeply about his students. So it’s not a false persona – he’s skilled at self-monitoring (i.e. able to modify his behaviour to meet the ‘social demands of a situation’). Cain calls such people ‘pseudo-extroverts’, and advises that they’ll need ‘restorative niches’ to avoid burnout.

Award winning university teacher, John Croucher, found in a five year study that

there was one [student survey] question that was consistently most highly associated [with good teaching] across all subject areas over all the years. This was the one that asked whether the teacher was able to explain the course material clearly. There were a number of instances where a teacher was rated as enthusiastic, knowledgeable and well-prepared, but was still considered a poor teacher overall.

Similarly, a large longitudinal study recently reported in Studies in Higher Education found that students’ exposure to clear and organised classroom instruction was significantly and positively linked to increased deep approaches to learning and critical thinking.

So what do you reckon? Should new teachers start off by focusing on giving clear explanations and being well-organised? Will the enthusiasm and passion be easier to convey with more experience, as confidence builds?

]]>https://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/06/19/let-me-entertain-you/feed/0amanibellIt’s all just a little bit of history repeatinghttps://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/03/07/its-all-just-a-little-bit-of-history-repeating/
https://theycallmedrbell.com/2014/03/07/its-all-just-a-little-bit-of-history-repeating/#respondFri, 07 Mar 2014 00:43:49 +0000http://theycallmedrbell.com/?p=139

Here are my fairly rough notes and reflections. I found the book to be very frank about academic developers’ experiences, as most of the interviewees have now retired so they can really spill the beans without fear of repercussions!

It’s good to know the history of the field in which I’m working. In fact, I think it should be mandatory reading for all new Aussie academic developers.

I enjoyed reading about the contributions of people who didn’t necessarily publish or publicise their work – they just got on with doing it.

I loved Barbara Falk’s description of the early seminars she ran on uni teaching – still mostly the same topics 50 years on.

There are many quotes that still have resonance today e.g.

‘It was vital to have senior people who saw academic development as valuable because one of our biggest problems was that the Deans were always fighting for money. Very often they saw academic development as a waste of time and money.’ (p87) – Terry Hore & Ian Thomas

‘ …what you got was the setting up of deans of teaching and learning, pro vice-chancellors of teaching; a whole organization sort of alongside the academic development units. I have a feeling that that really sidelined some of the academic development units…’ (p129) – Roger Landbeck

I particularly enjoyed the chapter about the history of my own academic development unit (ADU), which was established in the 1980s. Apparently the University of Sydney was ‘the last major university in the country without an ADU….I came to the CTL in 1982 and in the beginning there was just the Director (Michael Dunkin), Mike Prosser and me. We were like a beleaguered little ship in the night.’ (p159) – Jackie Lublin. It was great to read about how everything started, and to be aware the origins of some of the programs we still offer today.

You can read more about the how and why the editors conducted the study here.

The second day of the colloquium kicked off with presentations by A/Prof Adam Bridgeman, Chemistry, and Dr Sandra Peter, Business School, who spoke about how they have flipped their classes. You can see a short video here on how Adam uses worksheets and demonstrations in his lectures – because when you put some of the lecture content online, there’s more room for fun stuff. Adam showed us some student feedback, including this memorable statement:

Student feedback on @AdamBridgeman's teaching method: "You'd have to be a real f****** idiot if you didn't think this helps" #sydteach2013

Sandra also encouraged people to take small steps towards flipping their classes. Just add some online resources, you don’t need to change the face-to-face classes at first – work towards it. She showed a great slide of herself at home recording a video using her smartphone balanced on a tower of containers!

During question time, Adam said that peer observation was a useful way for academics to develop their teaching. And research agrees (including my own research *cough, cough*). Adam said that sitting in the back row was a good way to see a class from a student perspective.

After the morning tea break, there was a choice of two sessions. I’m not sure what happened in the ‘Learning Analytics’ session, though one of the presenters, Dr Abelardo Pardo, kindly shared his slides via Twitter:

And Craig told us about how he uses creatively uses technology such as iPads used to teach children with autism. He also gave us a bag of ‘digital candy’, which James Humberstone has helpfully collected:

The day concluded with a student panel and group discussions about students’ expectations and experiences of technology. The student panel said that they valued animation, simulations, role plays, online submission of work, facilitated online discussion spaces & the technology working. There was strong agreement that students want lecture recordings and lecture slides to be available online, which sparked an interesting discussion on Twitter:

@AmaniBell they *always* say this, then hardly ever access the slides or recordings.

Yesterday, Wednesday 2nd October, was the first day of the University of Sydney’s annual Teaching Colloquium. This year the theme is ‘Blended Learning for Engaged Enquiry’ . Here are a few of my impressions.

During the keynote address by Professor Pip Pattison I made a note to look up these reports on MOOCs: More than MOOCs by Austrade and Maturing of the MOOC, a literature review commissioned by the UK government. Pip also mentioned a recent paper that shows that non-tenure track academics are better teachers than those with tenure. In a group activity after the keynote, our table discussed possible outcome measures for blended learning, and came up with the following:

student assessment outcomes and quality

participation and engagement – students will participate if they see the value in doing so

‘mastery’ – connects to intrinsic motivation

meaningful collaboration between students

students report that they are motivated to engage in the unit of the study (this data could be collected at the beginning, middle and end of the unit)

For the rest of the day we heard from Faculty leaders and academics on what they are doing in the blended learning space. There are some fantastic initiatives, and there were also thought-provoking questions and comments from both the live audience and those on Twitter. Here are some of my favourite tweets from Day 1:

It is the pedagogy, not the technology, that will lead to effective, engaged inquiry. – Pro. VC Marie Carroll #sydteach2013

This is turning into a bit of a Storify, so I’ll stop there! But perhaps this gives a small taste of the conversations that were going on, both in the room and on the Twitter back channel.

To conclude day 1, we heard from the Vice Chancellor (who had something perplexing to say about distancing assessment from teaching, but more on that another time) and then we celebrated our award winning teachers. Those who stayed for the team trivia had lots of fun, with the trophy going the Engineering and IT team ‘The Turing Testers’.